As well known to those skilled in the art, various fragile goods needing to be handled with care, for example expensive bottled cosmetics, electronic and electric products such as television sets, are conventionally packaged using rigid boxes with shock-absorbing materials. The above shock-absorbing materials are used for absorbing the outside shock applied to the packaged goods and thereby protect the goods from the shock.
In the prior art, both expanded polystyrene formed according to the contours of the goods to be packaged and cardboard mounts folded into given shapes or partially cut out sufficient enough to hold the goods in the package boxes are generally used as shock-absorbing materials. When the goods to be packaged are heavy goods such as refrigerators, the packaging materials for such goods need to be provided with both excellent shock absorptivity and rigidity sufficient enough to absorb the outside shock and to bear the weight of the heavy goods. In order to achieve the above object, the package boxes for such heavy goods are preferably bottomed with wooden pallets.
The expanded polystyrene used as a shock-absorbing material has an advantage in that it is easily formed and suitable for mass production. However, the expanded polystyrene breaks easily and induces static electricity. Therefore, the expanded polystyrene not only causes environmental contamination due to its broken pieces, but also is scarcely used for packaging precision goods due to the static electricity. Otherwise stated, use of the expanded polystyrene as the shock-absorbing material is limited as it remarkably reduces the expected life of the packaged goods.
The cardboard mounts folded into given shapes or partially cut out sufficient enough to hold the goods in the package boxes are problematic in that they are not suitable for mass production. Furthermore, the above cardboard mounts have inferior durability and generate paper dust while packaging the goods. Due to the inferior durability as well as the paper dust, the above cardboard mounts may exert a bad influence upon the expected life of the packaged goods.
In order to rectify the above problems, package cases formed using pulp molds have been recently proposed and used. However, the above package cases need to be formed using individual molds even when the cases are produced on a small scale. As the molds should be produced by highly skilled workers one by one, the package cases are problematic in that it is very difficult to produce the cases. Another problem of the above package cases is that they are expensive.
As people are recently becoming environmentally conscious, used packaging materials need appropriate treating to prevent them from causing environmental contamination. However, it has been noted that treatment of various plastic packaging materials such as expanded polystyrene is very difficult as the above plastic packaging materials can not be recycled. The above plastic packaging materials will cause environmental contamination and exert a bad influence upon the ecosystem when they are simply discarded. Therefore, environmentally conscious people tend to avoid using such plastic packaging materials. Thus, demand for the above plastic packaging materials is reduced.